Birmingham goes 'Beyond the Boson' at the Royal Society

Scientists from the University of Birmingham are showcasing ground breaking research into the Higgs boson at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2014.

The theory of the Higgs boson was developed in the 1960s by Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. Its existence was only proven in 2012 experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva.

Scientists are only just beginning to learn what the Higgs boson can tell us beyond the current Standard Model theory of physics. Searches for what lies beyond the Higgs boson continue with CERN's Large Hadron Collider and planning is underway for future accelerators and experiments; including the 31km International Linear Collider and an even larger 100km circumference accelerator at CERN.

Dr Kostas Nikolopoulos, a Birmingham Fellow from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham said: “Now we’ve found the Higgs boson, some people think our work is done. Our story really starts with the Nobel Prize being awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, and asks ‘what’s next’?”

Dr Cristina Lazzeroni, a Reader in Particle Physics from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham said: "the observation of the Higgs boson by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 was a scientific milestone. More data has then consolidated the discovery and prompted the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics".

The ‘Higgs boson and beyond’ exhibit features the chance to discover the Higgs boson 70s style, an opportunity to control the motion of electrons in a magnetic field, to study the effect of spin with a pinball table and a chance to attempt to balance the Higgs boson mass using new contributions to physics.

Notes to Editors

The ‘Higgs boson and beyond’ is a collaborative effort of the UK particle physics community involving 18 institutes (Brunel, Imperial College, Lancaster, Queen Mary, RAL, Royal Holloway, UCL, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford, Sheffield, Sussex, Warwick), coordinated by Dr Kostas Nikolopoulos and Dr Cristina Lazzeroni from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham, and Dr Wahid Bhimji from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.